last night i dreamed
you walked
out of the faceless
city hum
crazy bluebird tattoo
across your neck—Tu Do street, 1968
changed
but somehow still the same
you looked happy
to be alive again
as if an angel
had rolled back the stone
& pulled you out clean—
your face triggered
something i couldn’t locate
like an old address book
with a missing page
a vital name
lost forever—
you’ve been dead
more than forty years
& i’m still here
flat on my back
in a dirty little bed
in a dirty little room
addicted to this weakness
relaxed by the fact
of never having
to be strong again
knowing
that all the dope
in the world
will never make me well
trying—one more time
to stamp some meaning
on that old war game
we used to play—body count
you used to laugh & say:
“the only difference
between the winners & losers
is who gets the grease”
but for you & me
that turned out to be
no difference at all

We went as brothers
from different towns to this one,
meeting at the memorial,
our pasts broken down by
slab after slab of gray granite.

People moved like solemn shapes
no one speaking.
Black rain pecked our skins
but those were tears on Charlie’s face.
There might have been a million names.
There might have been but one.
War is an unscrupulous host.

A young boy my son’s age
Dragged his fingers across rows of engraved letters
I thought my brothers might be angered by the child’s act
but instead my eldest grinned and said,
“That’s why I went.
For him.”

For Those

For those born later
they would only know it as the bad war
the mistake
the one they made so many movies about.
At the time, protesters received more attention
and history may never right that wrong
or the ignorance of a new generation
but to the men
to the women
to the souls who went there,
I bow down
and I say,
“God bless you.”

They speak to me.
Row upon row
of white stones
from the Civil War
to the present
marking the same sorrow
as if time stood still.
It does for those laid to rest
and for those who love them.
Throughout the years, the voices cry:
“Goodbye son, daughter, sister, brother,
husband, wife, mommy, daddy.
We love you and miss you.”
The souls whisper:
“Our wars are over.
We are at peace.
We wish the same for you.”

the sure thing is
to throw down the pen,
toss away the legal pad
and pick up a book
by a poet
you know and admire,
one who has already
fought and died
in battle with words,
or lives on,
a wounded veteran,
if not proud,
accepting of his scars.